His-and-her studios: Couple stake out own spaces in Colonial Acres home

Melanie and Bobby Spillman pose for a portrait in one of two art studios in their home. Both have found a way to make art a part of their personal and professional lives both as successful artists and art teachers.

Melanie paints mostly in black and white, using Sumi ink. This work, "With Your Teeth In Your Mouth," hangs in the couple's bedroom.

This painting by artist Bobby, titled "Smoke Smoke Smoke!", hangs in the couple's living room.

When they tell their friends they live in a three-bedroom house, Melanie and Bobby Spillman know what's coming next."They think we must be planning on having kids," Bobby, 37, said. "I correct them and say it's a one-bedroom house with two studios."

The Spillmans are artists — namely, painters.

"This is not a place where kids should stay over," Melanie, 40, said. "We're very selfish about our space and time."

With media, scissors, brushes and other various tools and tackle laying around, the two shut the studio doors in their Colonial Acres home at night even to the new kitten in the house.

When it's studio time, Melanie heads to the back of the house to her room, which sits across the hall from the bedroom, where she has whitewashed the walls several times to cover up inscriptions that inspire her.

"Sometimes the lyrics to a song will spark an idea for a painting, and I will write the words to it on my studio walls. It could influence a character in one of my paintings and create a dialogue," she said. "At one point, there were so many words I couldn't see."

In stark contrast, Bobby's room, situated next to Melanie's, is washed in bright orange, a color that shows up in his paintings frequently.

"It's one of those colors I never liked. When I was in grad school, I decided to start using all the colors I didn't care about, and now it's become one of my favorite colors," he said. "I use so much orange it's retarded."

Melanie mostly paints in black and white, using Sumi ink — "like India ink, but blacker" — layering images of women from the Victorian era to the present.

"I paint images of women from different time periods and combine them to tell a story. Sometimes the characters are talking to each other. Sometimes they are talking to the viewer," she said. "I love storytelling and the history of someone else who was there and folklore that was passed down by word-of-mouth whether it is true or not."

Much of the inspiration for her work can be found on shelves and hand-me-down carts where she houses permission-free books of Victorian era newspaper illustrations, collaged-over and glittered-up sketchbooks she's crafted over the years and CDs, like The Smiths' Strangeways, Here We Come, that end up with their lyrics on her walls.

"Of course there's glitter on (my sketchbooks)," she said.

On one shelf sits a box of old letters she inherited from a friend.

"They're her grandfather's from World War II. He wrote them to his girlfriend, who became his fiancee and eventually his wife. It's amazing. I can't believe his handwriting. I like to believe he wrote them by candlelight," she said.

She's blown them up, copied them and uses them as background for some of her newer paintings.

Bobby, who teaches art at Houston High School, collects comic books.

"It's an appreciation for them from when I was a kid. I don't know, I just always liked the art and telling stories with pictures," he said. "I always say I'm not going to buy anymore, but I keep doing it. Maybe one day, one of my nieces or nephews will inherit them."

He keeps them stored in boxes stacked against a wall in his room, including the original box from his childhood, which is covered in stickers.

Comic books and other imagery from his childhood play a principal role in Bobby's fantastical storybook-style paintings.

"I use a lot of children's-book imagery — fluffy animals and silly landscapes. It's a lighthearted narrative or cartoon-themed morals. They're sarcastic, sometimes political. I'm always poking fun at ourselves a little," he said. "If I overhear someone who says something ridiculous, I'll obsess over it and then I'll have a painting of two grizzly bears fighting over a croquet match."

"Most of the stuff I do (at home) is transportable. I'll work on my drawings for my gallery shows. When I need to be messy, I go to my painting studio," Bobby said, referring to another studio he keeps in Midtown. "This is for when I need to be at home and I don't want to be out."

For those purposes, he keeps two vintage metal desks — both found on the street — on which he composes his sketches of drawings of a giant boat inside a whale.

Similar to Melanie's appreciation for other times, Bobby also has an affinity for the nostalgic.

Not only are his work desks vintage, but also his chairs are a throwback to the old days.

"This was my chair from my studio at the U of M," he said.

It is orange.

Old metal card catalog drawers house varying colors of brush pens in one corner, and the former deejay maintains a steady inflow of newly found vinyl records that range from Rod Stewart to Isaac Hayes to Fred Wesley and the New JBs to "metal that was out less than a year ago."

"I dropped out of art school and got a degree in broadcasting," he said. "I was a deejay for years."

That move probably cinched the deal for the eventual couple.

"We didn't work together very well in the art program," Bobby said. "We were at opposite ends of the spectrum."

Bobby went on to become a deejay and began booking bands, and the girl that was in all of his foundation art classes kept showing up."I was booking bands in town and she was in a band, so we started hanging out from there," he said.

Their differences in color, their mutual love of the nostalgic, their dedication to their craft — somehow they found a way to make it work.

"We respect each other's space," Melanie said. "It's nice. At the end of a work session, we'll sit down and talk with a beer in the studio."